Let's Talk
Pedigrees
Anne Jones RN, BSNE
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For some people, pedigrees are gibberish. For others they are
boring. To me they are a way to solve a mystery. You see, I study
pedigrees to find out why certain dogs live a long time and others
die from disease or genetic disorder. My interest stems from my long
time involvement in Bichon health issues and my curiosity as to why
some Bichons are healthy and others are not.
I can give you two very good reasons why I find pedigrees
fascinating. The first is my knowledge that one certain Bichon from
the very earliest American breedings had a very interesting
background. It makes me wonder just how much she influenced the
breed. Are you curious?
Lyne of Milton was probably Gertrude Fournier’s favorite bitch. She
also had and bred her sister Lassy but Lyne was her love. I remember
once walking into a room with Lyne’s granddaughter in my arms.
Gertrude was holding court (Gertrude enjoyed holding court!) during
one of her visits to Pennsylvania. I had gone next door to visit
Oleana’s owner and just happened to pick Oleana up and take her back
with me when I returned. No plan in mind, just did it. What happened
next was almost eerie. Gert stopped in mid-sentence, held out her
arms and said, “Lynn, my Lynn”, with a yearning look.
I was not, of course, holding Lynn but it was Lynn’s granddaughter
and she must have looked very much like her granddam. Now let’s talk
about Lynn and why that granddaughter could well have looked a lot
like her. You see Lynn was from a brother/sister breeding, said by
some to be a very influencial and strong breeding under any
circumstances. But there is more. Lynn’s grandparents were also from
a brother/sister breeding, as were the generation before them. Go
back one more generation and the breeding was a father/daughter
breeding! If you don’t believe me, look it up.
I would guess there are not many Bichon breeders these days who have
even looked that far back on their pedigrees to see Lynn of Milton
listed, much less to go back to the pre-USA breedings. Can you
imagine how strong is her influence even many generations down the
line?
More recently I have been interested in another European Bichon, a
male this time. But let me fill in the background. I had a Bichon
from a line of long lived Bichons. She had a number of relatives who
lived into their 17th year and even into the 18th for a few. Sandy
topped them all by making it to age 19, a rather rare occurrence in
Bichons. When we averaged life spans after our first health survey,
we surmised that 14 was about average and we knew from personal
experience with show breeders that many lived into their 16th year
and a few beyond that. Rumor had a couple of known Bichons as
reaching age 20.
With my responsibilities as health chairman of BFCA at the time, I
decided to see if we could find out how often Bichons were living
longer than the expected 16 years. We placed an inquiry on the web
site at
http://bichon.org that asked anyone
with a Bichon reaching age 19 or above to contact me. I have
received a number of responses, mostly from pet owners, some giving
ages as high as 22 and 23. One personal stipulation in the interest
of accuracy was not to count any dog for which I could not receive
either accurate registration information, including registered names
of parents and date of birth, or better yet, a copy of the pedigree.
The pedigree was very important to me if I was to determine, which I
hoped to do, any influential Bichon in the pedigree that might have
a “longevity gene or genes”. With accurate registration names, I
could trace the pedigree myself with stud pages (which I have up to
the mid-80s). Date of birth and date of death were needed to provide
length of life.
I will tell you that this personal “research” has been quite
interesting. In every pedigree that I was able to trace, I was
finding common ancestry! Now we are not talking dozens of pedigrees
here, just a few, but those few were most interesting. Enough so
that I submitted blood to a couple of longevity studies. I have no
idea how much the DNA helped the studies – and will never know – but
it seemed logical to provide blood since I had been saving blood
since Sandy.
Do I think there is a longevity gene? I have no idea but it would be
more likely to be a combination of genes than to be a single gene.
There has to be something that influences longer than normal life in
both humans and canines. A strong immune system, without question,
possibly a healthy life style but I have known humans who were very
careless about lifestyle who lived for a long time – have been
related to a few of them! How often have you heard someone say “It’s
in the genes”?
But let’s continue with my story. I did find a fairly recent
American Bichon in these pedigrees but then I had a pedigree that
came in that did not have him in it. I had long since dismissed his
personal influence because this same dog is in lots and lots of
pedigrees and many of those descendants have lived short lives. But
now I find his ancestor in a pedigree that did not include him. This
supported my theory that the American dog was not the influential
one, he just carried some genes in his personal package. But this
ancestor? Maybe.
Since Sandy’s son is now 18 ˝ , I have been wondering how long he
will make it. He had been extremely healthy until about 3 months ago
when he developed an abscessed canine that could not be extracted
due to his age. I decided to pull another tube of his blood, just in
case, and contacted the Canine Data bank to ask if it seemed logical
to do this. I was told yes, especially since Tucker’s pedigree goes
back in 6 or 7 generations to some first American and other European
Bichons. There are not many dogs alive today that you can say that
about. Remember his dam was born in 1981 and he was born in 1988.
The first Bichons were registered by AKC in 1973.
Prior to pulling and shipping blood, I decided to look more into
pedigrees behind Tucker and, lo and behold, this earlier dog was
also on the opposite side of his pedigree. He shows up as many as 4
times on some of my dogs. So maybe we do carry the longevity genes –
or maybe we don’t. Regardless I will go ahead and store Tucker’s
DNA, that of my 17 year old bitch whose dam was a full (older)
sister to Tucker, and that of my 10 year old that also has the
ancestor multiple times because her pedigree is double on both Sandy
and my dog Teddy, Oleana’s grandson.
Did I mention that the mystery ancestor is also in Oleana’s
pedigree? I guess I left out that part but he is! The mystery
ancestor was not related to Lynn of Milton but he is behind Bertha
from another line. So you can see that pedigree study in my case has
led to some interesting suppositions.
By now I hope I have you very interested in researching pedigrees,
if for no other reason than to try to find – ta da – Ombre de la
Roche Posay. Yes, he is the mystery Bichon that I keep finding in
the pedigrees of long lived Bichons. I hope you will notify me
through
bichon.org if you also have a
Bichon with him in your pedigree that lived an exceptionally long
life. You could be helping to prove my point but remember that I
need accurate registration information and pedigrees.
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